Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers
‘No! You can’t go — you can’t leave him to die — your President — your leader — my — I won’t let it happen. Set this devil free. Help me, one of you, with the ropes —’
‘None of that, now,’ said the man who had spoken before. He caught her by the wrists, and she twisted, shrieking, in his arms, biting and struggling to get free.
‘Think, think,’ said the man with the treacly voice. ‘It’s getting on to morning. It’ll be light in an hour or two. The police may be here any minute.’
‘The police!’ She seemed to control herself by a violent effort. ‘Yes, yes, you are right. We must not imperil the safety of all for the sake of one man. He himself would not wish it. That is so. We will put this carrion in the cellar where it cannot harm us, and depart, every one to his own place, while there is time.’
‘And the other prisoner?’
‘He? Poor fool — he can do no harm. He knows nothing. Let him go,’ she answered contemptuously.
In a few minutes’ time Wimsey found himself bundled unceremoniously into the depths of the cellar. He was a little puzzled. That they should refuse to let him go, even at the price of Number One’s life, he could understand. He had taken the risk with his eyes open. But that they should leave him as a witness against them seemed incredible.
The men who had taken him down strapped his ankles together and departed, switching the lights out as they went.
‘Hi! Kamerad!’ said Wimsey. ‘It’s a bit lonely sitting here. You might leave the light on.’
‘It’s all right, my friend,’ was the reply. ‘You will not be in the dark long. They have set the time-fuse.’
The other man laughed with rich enjoyment, and they went out together. So that was it. He was to be blown up with the house. In that case the President would certainly be dead before he was extricated. This worried Wimsey, he would rather have been able to bring the big crook to justice. After all, Scotland Yard had been waiting six years to break up this gang.
He waited, straining his ears. It seemed to him that he heard footsteps over his head. The gang had all crept out by this time
There was certainly a creak. The trap-door had opened; he felt, rather than heard, somebody creeping into the cellar.
‘Hush!’ said a voice in his ear. Soft hands passed over his face, and went fumbling about his body. There came the cold touch of steel on his wrists. The ropes slackened and dropped off. A key clicked in the handcuffs. The strap about his ankles was unbuckled.
‘Quick! quick! they have set the time-switch. The house is mined. Follow me as fast as you can. I stole back — I said I had left my jewellery. It was true. I left it on purpose. He must be saved — only you can do it. Make haste!’
Wimsey, staggering with pain, as the blood rushed back into his bound and numbed arms, crawled after her into the room above. A moment, and she had flung back the shutters and thrown the window open.
‘Now go! Release him! You promise?’
‘I promise. And I warn you, madame, that this house is surrounded. When my safe-door closed it gave a signal which sent my servant to Scotland Yard. Your friends are all taken —’
‘Ah! But you go — never mind me — quick! The time is almost up.’
‘Come away from this!’
He caught her by the arm, and they went running and stumbling across the little garden. An electric torch shone suddenly in the bushes.
‘That you, Parker?’ cried Wimsey. ‘Get your fellows away. Quick! the house is going up in a minute.’
The garden seemed suddenly full of shouting, hurrying men. Wimsey, floundering in the darkness, was brought up violently against the wall. He made a leap at the coping, caught it, and hoisted himself up. His hands groped for the woman; he swung her up beside him. They jumped; everyone was jumping; the woman caught her foot and fell with a gasping cry. Wimsey tried to stop himself, tripped over a stone, and came down headlong. Then, with a flash and a roar, the night went up in fire.
Wimsey picked himself painfully out from among the debris of the garden wall. A faint moaning near him proclaimed that his companion was still alive. A lantern was turned suddenly upon them.
‘Here you are!’ said a cheerful voice. ‘Are you all right, old thing? Good lord! what a hairy monster!’
‘All right,’ said Wimsey. ‘Only a bit winded. Is the lady safe? H’m — arm — broken, apparently — otherwise sound. What’s happened?’
‘About half a dozen of ’em got blown up; the rest we’ve bagged.’ Wimsey became aware of a circle of dark forms in the wintry dawn. ‘Good Lord, what a day! What a come-back for a public character! You old stinker — to let us go on for two years thinking you were dead! I bought a bit of black for an armband. I did, really. Did anybody know, besides Bunter?’
‘Only my mother and sister. I put it in a secret trust — you know, the thing you send to executors and people. We shall have an awful time with the lawyers, I’m afraid, proving I’m me. Hullo! Is that friend Sugg?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Inspector Sugg, grinning and nearly weeping with excitement. ‘Damned glad to see your lordship again. Fine piece of work, your lordship. They’re all wanting to shake hands with you, sir.’
‘Oh, Lord! I wish I could get washed and shaved first. Awfully glad to see you all again, after two years’ exile in Lambeth. Been a good little show, hasn’t it?’
‘Is he safe?’
Wimsey started at the agonised cry.
‘Good Lord!’ he cried. ‘I forgot the gentleman in the safe. Here, fetch a car, quickly. I’ve got the great big top Moriarty of the whole bunch quietly asphyxiating at home. Here — hop in, and put the lady in too. I promised we’d get back and save him — though’ (he finished the sentence in Parker’s ear) ‘there may be murder charges too, and I wouldn’t give much for his chance at the Old Bailey. Whack her up. He can’t last much longer shut up there. He’s the bloke you’ve been wanting, the man at the back of the Morrison case and the Hope-Wilmington case, and hundreds of others.’
The cold morning had turned the streets grey when they drew up before the door of the house in Lambeth. Wimsey took the woman by the arm and helped her out. The mask was off now, and showed her face, haggard and desperate, and white with fear and pain.
‘Russian, eh?’ whispered Parker in Wimsey’s ear.
‘Something of the sort. Damn! the front door’s blown shut, and the blighter’s got the key with him in the safe. Hop through the window, will you?’
Parker bundled obligingly in, and in a few seconds threw open the door to them. The house seemed very still. Wimsey led the way to the back room, where the strong-room stood. The outer door and the second door stood propped open with chairs. The inner door faced them like a blank green wall.
‘Only hope he hasn’t upset the adjustment with thumping at it,’ muttered Wimsey. The anxious hand on his arm clutched feverishly. He pulled himself together, forcing his tone to one of cheerful commonplace.
‘Come on, old thing,’ he said, addressing himself conversationally to the door. ‘Show us your paces. Open Sesame, confound you. Open Sesame!’
The green door slid suddenly away into the wall. The woman sprang forward and caught in her arms the humped and senseless thing that rolled out from the safe. Its clothes were torn to ribbons, and its battered hands dripped blood.
‘It’s all right,’ said Wimsey, ‘it’s all right! He’ll live — to stand his trial.’
NOTES TO THE SOLUTION
I.1. VIRGO: The sign of the zodiac between LEO (strength) and LIBRA (justice). Allusion to parable of The Ten Virgins.
I.3. R.S.: Royal Society, whose fellows’ are addicted to studies usually considered dry-as-dust.
IV.3. TESTAMENT (or will); search is to be directed to the Old Testament. Ref. to parable of New Cloth and Old Garment.
XIV.3. HI: ‘He would answer to Hi!
Or to any loud cry.’
The Hunting of the Snark.
I.5. TRANS.: Abbreviation of Transla
XI.5. SCENT: ‘Even the scent of roses
Is not what they supposes,
But more than mind discloses
And more than men believe.’
G. K. Chesterton: The Song of Quoodle.
VI.7. ICTUS: Blow, add V (five) and you get VICTUS (vanquished); the ictus is the stress in a foot of verse; if the stress be misplaced the line goes lamely.
I.8. SPINOZA: He wrote on the properties of optical glasses; also on metaphysics.
IV.13. THIRTY-ONE: Seven (months) out of the twelve of the sun’s course through the heavens have thirty-one days.
XIV.13. ET: Conjunction. In astrology an aspect of the heavenly bodies. That Cicero was the master of this word indicates that it is a Latin one.
X.14. BEZOAR: The bezoar stone was supposed to be a prophylactic against poison.
11.I. PLAUD: If you would laud, then plaud (var. of applaud); Plaud-it also means ‘cheer.’
10.II. ALIENA: As You Like It. II.1.130.
1.III. R.D. : ‘Refer to Drawer.’
4.III. CANTICLES: The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis are known as the Canticles, but the Book of Canticles (the Vulgate name for the Song of Songs, in which the solution is found) occurs earlier in the Bible.
2.VI. EST: ’αυ και μη ’ου = est and non est — the problem of being and not-being. Ref. Marlowe: Doctor Faustus I.1.
12.X. TOB.: Add IT to get Tobit; the tale of Tobit and the Fish is in the Apocrypha (the book of hidden things).
1.XI. MANES: ‘Un lion est une mâchoire et non pas une criniere’: Emile Faguet: Lit. du XVIIe siècle. Manes: benevolent spirits of the dead.
1.XV. SAINT: Evidence of miraculous power is required for canonisation.
THE SOLUTION
OF THE CROSS-WORD PUZZLE IN “UNCLE MELEAGER’S WILL”
A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. The Los Angeles Times hailed Sayers as “one of the greatest mystery story writers of [the twentieth] century.”
Born in Oxford, England, she was the only child of Reverend Henry Sayers, headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School and then rector of Bluntisham village. Sayers grew up in the Bluntisham rectory, then won a scholarship to Oxford University, where she studied modern languages and worked at the publishing house Blackwell’s, which in 1916 published Op. 1, Sayers’ first book of poetry.
In 1922 Sayers took a job as a copywriter for London advertising firm S. H. Benson, forerunner to the famous Ogilvy & Mather. There she created several popular slogans and campaigns, including the iconic, animal-theme Guinness advertisements that are still used today.
While working as a copywriter, Sayers began work on Whose Body? (1923), a mystery novel featuring dapper detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Over the next two decades, Sayers published ten more Wimsey novels and several short stories, crafting a character whose complexity was unusual for the mystery novels of the time. Handsome, brave, and charming, Wimsey has a few defining flaws, including his tendency to prattle, fear of responsibility, and perpetual nervousness caused by shell shock inflicted during World War I. Sayers once described him as a cross between Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. Her writing was praised by fellow mystery writers Ruth Rendell and P. D. James; James said that Sayers “brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.”
Set between the two World Wars, the Wimsey novels are more than typical manor-house mysteries. Sayers used her knowledge of various topics—including advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health—to give her books realistic details. In 1936, she brought Wimsey to the stage in Busman’s Honeymoon, a story which Sayers would publish as a novel the following year. The play was so successful that she gave up mystery writing to focus on the stage, producing a series of religious works culminating in The Man Born to Be King (1941), a radio drama about the life of Jesus.
Sayers continued writing theological essays and criticism during and after World War II. In 1949, she published the first volume of a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. She was halfway through the third volume when she died of a heart attack in 1957. Although she considered this translation to be her best work, it is for her elegantly constructed detective fiction that Sayers remains best remembered.
Sayers in the garden of her Oxford home, around 1897. She holds her two toy monkeys, Jocko and Jacko.
An 1899 studio portrait of Sayers, around six years old. (Photo courtesy of I. Palmer Clarke/Cambridge.)
The Sayers family circa 1905. Dorothy (about age twelve) posed with her family outside their home at the Bluntisham rectory. First row, left to right: Gertrude Sayers (aunt), Dorothy. Second row, left to right: Anna Breakey Sayers (grandmother), Mabel Leigh (aunt). Back row, left to right: Reverend Henry Sayers (father), Ivy Shrimpton (cousin), Helen Mary Leigh Sayers (mother).
Seventeen-year-old Sayers wearing a pageant costume in 1908.
Sayers with friends, posing as shipping magnate Sir Hugh Allen, in 1915.
A studio portrait of Sayers taken in 1926.
Sayers’s husband, “Mac” Fleming, at home in 1930 behind overflowing boxes of Sayers’s fan mail. A family friend sits to the right. (Photo courtesy of the Tropical Press Agency.)
Sayers’s husband, “Mac” Fleming, standing in doorway.
Sayers in 1950, at the unveiling of a plaque at the S. H. Benson advertising agency, where she once worked as a copywriter. The plaque was placed at the foot of a spiral staircase in the agency, a tribute to a character in Murder Must Advertise who plunges down a similar staircase.
All images used by permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1928 by Payson & Clarke, Ltd.
cover design by Katrina Damkoehler
978-1-4532-6248-1
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Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Views the Body